This particular newsletter touches on rural outsourcing. That’s a great topic and one to consider if you are retooling processes. Might the best deal be from Kansas? As Joe Feiman used to say (paraphrasing), “It can be a choice between India and Indiana.”

• Personnel has become Human Resources (HR)
• Employees have become associates, partners, colleagues, team members, etc
• Soup has become broth, consommé, bisque – why can’t you just sell me some dang soup?

Ok, that last one was a bit personal… but It just goes on and on. Once good words are being pushed aside due to some inherent flaw in the original word. Sometimes, that flaw is simply the fact that the word has cobwebs. Other times, it’s because of political correctness, a false sense of intimacy, or some need to introduce change. Actually, we no longer introduce change. We now transform, renew and revitalize. Ick! So, when does BPM get the ax?

Perhaps, BPM will be pushed aside and replaced by a jazzier term. BPR was once a term we all used. But, BPR was poisoned with down-sizing and right-sizing, so it had to die. BPM doesn’t seem to have that same bile. But, time marches on…and words meet their doom.

In 2018, we will certainly be talking about the THINGS that we currently call PROCESSES. We will be talking about how they relate to BUSINESS and how they can be MANAGED. But… will be we talking about BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT (BPM) in one collective mouth-full? I wonder. To be fair, we might be calling cloud by different names; services by new tags; events by jazzier labels. Nothing resists change… er, I mean… Nothing resists transformation.

Labels are the spawn of marketing and we are become a market-driven economy. But, labels are real and powerful, so we cannot ignore BPM’s future, and we cannot leave it to the whims of some Ketel One drinking ad exec to come up with a sizzling new term for us.

What alternative terms can you imagine to describe that which we currently define by BPM? I don’t care about being right. I just want to see where we might go with this.

Think… and thanks for playing.

• It’s difficult being an SME and maintaining your business – your little part of the franchise. Too many airplanes, too many meetings… too little time doing what made you successful. Do you think that might cause resentment? “Is this my reward? I do the best I can, and they make me a guinea pig for the whole company?” The answer is yes.
• It’s not what he signed up for. He came to work to make money and deliver service. The SME thing is nailing him on both counts. He’s delivering service, but it’s to the internal powers. Hardly what he signed up for. Is he making money? His staff will have to tell him, when he comes in from the airport. If he comes home this week.
• It’s not fun seeing all the internal politics and the machinery of IT at work. My friend has gotten deep in the bowels of IT, and process design, and reports, and screens, and all that “requirements definition” stuff. Yawn. He’s unmotivated. He’s not excited about what he sees. It’s just a big ole sausage factory and he’s the main spice, being squeezed and sprinkled as the chef sees fit.

I can go on. You have a friend just like this. We all do.

We claim that we love and respect our SMEs. Do we? Or do we use and abuse them to mine their brains and best practices? Your call. See how you are doing it. See what you can do better.

I’ll just watch my friend get a bit grayer and a bit more jaded at the whole “process.”

Certification for Business Process Competency Centers – Hallway discussion with Les from ebizQ and Samir from Appian.  Interesting twist to shift the certification discussion from the individual to the collective. Now, what if you create a CMM-like approach for BPM maturity? That gets really interesting.

IBM’s Ilog integration – This is nerdy, yes… But, I saw a pretty nice integration of IBM’s Ilog acquisition at the show. I saw JRULES linked into WID via a wizard that would work with the JAR file, and an alternative direct WSDL grabbing approach. Not all of it was available today, but the integration was smooth and graphical. Nothing here is really new in theory, just in look, feel, and ease of use.

The Big Fish Metaphor – This year, it’s hard to get masses of people to attend a user conference. Several vendors confirmed that they were rethinking or delaying their conferences until 2010.  Q4 is a booger. But get this. It’s like a river current. When the current is weak (good years) there is no resistance and all the fish can navigate the waters – everyone shows up at your user conference. When the current is STRONG (huge Q4 travel restrictions, etc) only the strongest and biggest fish can swim upstream. You get fewer fish, but they are the top quality ones who made the extra effort to be there. Think about that when you are planning your user conferences. Quality vs quantity kind of thing.

Monsters, Inc. – I was leading a session on business rule management, and I described the care and mining of a rules subject matter expert. (SME)  To make it a bit more memorable, I reminded folks of Roz, from Monsters, Inc. If you have not seen the movie, you have missed some great animation. If you have seen Roz say, “You didn’t fill out your paperwork!” you have seen a classic business rules SME at work:

Mike: Roz, my tender, oozing blossom, you’re looking fabulous today. Is that a new haircut? Tell me it’s a new haircut. It’s got to be a new haircut. New makeup? You had a lift? You had a tuck? You had something? Something has been inserted in in you that makes you look… Listen, I need a favor. Randall was working late last night out on the scare floor. I really need the key to the door he was using.
Roz: Well, isn’t that nice? But guess what? You didn’t turn in your paperwork last night.
Mike: He didn’t… I… no paperwork?
Roz: This office is now closed.

There are people who know all about rules, and forms, and requirements, etc. They are SMEs and you need to treat them nicely. Not to spoil the movie, but you know Roz turned out to be a bit more important to the plot than you would have thought… so will your SMEs.

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Disclaimer: These are observations that I could have made on Twitter were I ignorant of the number 140, and were I Twittering.  I am not and I do not. I blog.  This is not research…. consider it fodder for discussion. Elise Olding will be producing a trip report from the conference for our clients. That will be research. Maybe some of this will make it in there, after it is scrubbed, baked and cooled on an open window.

One more ’self-serving’ comment. Lots of interest in my side hobby (the ‘humor column’).  Either I am showing too much excitement or people are hungry for laughs in 2009. I think it might be both.  2009 will soon be over… sooner than later if Oz has its way with interest rates. Until then, keep swmming.

• Certification will be attractive to BPO players outside the US. Just one more bit of street cred they can offer to prospective buyers.
• In general, certification may actually be more attractive outside the US, than in.  Maybe. Maybe for a long time. Maybe not.
• Brazil may be a good vector for pushing certification to the masses.

As a reality check… BPM certification is still immature. But, maybe that will change… maybe starting outside the US.  As I said, these are just “ideas.” Ideas <> Gartner Research.

Thoughts?

1. Business Rules
2. Business Rule roles and responsibilities
3. CIO Agendas (Is BPM on your agenda?)
4. Statement for today: “Explicit process is the imperative.”

Now, do I care? Not really! This is not a banking system playing with my account balance. It is not a medical records systems saying, “You’ve got cancer!… Wait… No…it’s a hang nail.” It’s not an on-line order entry system about to accidentally ship 1000 Barbie dolls to my house. Roy Schulte and I used to joke about that kind of process debacle, in those exact terms. No.. It’s not important. It’s just me, posting, “LOL! That was funny!” This system is not life-or-death.

This is the difference between Enterprise Class computing and Global Class computing. My buddy Daryl Plummer loves to talk about this. If you have not read his research on same, you really should. Bottom line: In the enterprise, we know you and we know you have expectations for quality of service. We also control you. Outside the enterprise…. we’ll, we don’t really know you and we certainly don’t control you. We also know that you will tolerate crappy performance in exchange for something important to you: access, information, collaboration, social interaction, etc.  Now, we don’t want to deliver crappy performance… but… well… stuff happens, eh? You Global Class participants will forgive us… you always do…

Global Class vs. Enterprise Class – A major design issue in 2009 and likely in 2020. Go figure.

The BPM Summit is Oct 5 – 7 in Orlando.  

Register here: 

Washing my car in 1978 – Water, bucket, sponge, old cloth T-shirt, Joy dishwashing detergent, maybe some paste wax (once a year) if Dad had any in the basement.

Washing my car in 2009 – Water, bucket, Microfiber wash mitt, Microfiber drying towel, Meguiar’s Deep Crystal car wash, Lexol Leather Cleaner, Lexol Leather Conditioner, BlueMagic Vinyl and Leather cleaner, Turtle Wax Ice Synthetic Liquid Polish, Turtle Wax Ice Synthetic Spray Detailer, Lifter 1 Carpet Stain Remover, BlueMagic Upholstery Stain Remover and Spot Lifter, Armor All Original Protectant, Glass Wipes and Cleaning Wipes. Don’t even want to think about the wheels and tires. Seriously.

I just bought all this cool stuff for my new, used car. Little old Lady [my Mom] only drove her 2002 Mercedes to church and back? Yeah. Seriously! The cliche is true! It’s mine now (for a song, thanks Mom) and she has returned to Honda Land where she always wanted to be! Spotless new old car, but I can make it even better.  

Just to be crystal clear, there are no endorsements implied in my Douglas Coupland-like brand-name-checking (Ok, I personally endorse water! And buckets! GO BUCKETS AND WATER!). I have yet to use all this new stuff. I may love each new product, or I may run screaming back to the store to return it all for a full refund. I certainly don’t want ANYONE in PR to somehow pervert this to say, “Gartner endorses Turtle Wax!”  Think it wouldn’t happen? Guess again. But the biggest question I want to address is: “Why am I doing this new process dance? What was wrong in 1978? What is right in 2009?”

David Byrne said it best in “Once in a Lifetime.” Watch the video. If you don’t get it, watch it again. If you still don’t get it… well, watch and listen again each and every morning until you do… even if it takes years. Byrne was a prophet and an artist. I wish we had more like him. I wish he would come help me wash this car. He can do the wheels.